I’m working on another essay involving mid-century jazz and the Blue Note label — this one involving organist Jimmy Smith and record company vaults, for The Threepenny Review — so I wanted to toss out links to some interesting, related video clips. One is an interview with engineer Rudy Van Gelder, one of the most important people in modern music, period. Nearly every jazz session on Blue Note, he was in the room taping it, countless sessions for Verve and Prestige, too. When you hear the warmth and richness of Coltrane’s “Blue Train” and Hank Mobley’s “Soul Station,” it’s because of Rudy. When you hear every fine detail of a jazz drummer’s brushes, or every crystaline note on Kenny Burrell’s guitar — and when Jimmy Smith’s organ sounds neither overdriven or like a chirping circus tent nightmare — we have Rudy to thank. He is, without question, the Coltrane of the control room.

Clip from the Blue Note “Perfect Takes” DVD:

Then there’s this short oddity, about Blue Note in general. Shake what nature gave you:

To celebrate the publication of the first section of my second novel, “Run Chicken Run,” at storySouth, here are some of the songs that inspired it: Link Wray’s “Vendetta,” “The Fuzz,” “Pancho Villa” and Link’s best vocal track, “Hidden Charms.” Like so many things in my creative life, Link provided the drive and soundtrack to this project, which is still ongoing. Now that there’s an excerpt published, though, I should probably get back to work on this novel; it can’t be the forever forthcoming novel forever. Endless thanks to editors Terry L. Kennedy and Drew Perry for taking a chance on it and for their careful reading and edits. Time for some fuzz: